EL NECECER ROJO
(The Red Vanity Case)
Directed by: Serge Garcia
Written by:Azalea Aguilar
Cinematography: Edson Reyes
Length: 15:00 min
Format: 16mm
Year: 2024
Qualified for the 97th Academy Awards for the Best Documentary Short Film category
Synopsis:
A red vanity case holds an unadorned story of a mother’s life. The daughter, ever the observer, watches as it fills with secrets, losses, and finally, ashes. This is the inheritance of migration, revealing the quiet tension between independence and abandonment, told with clinical precision in this award winning film.
Director’s note:
El Neceser Rojo is the first film in an anthology of short hybrid documentary films marked by a collaboration across generations—my mother writes autobiography, I direct. At the center is Artemisa—unconventional, magnetic, estranged—my grandmother.
This is not a story of healing, but of survival as residue. Of single motherhood as aftermath, not resolution. It asks what agency looks like within domestic and patriarchal confines, and whether its ever truly existed at all.
Festivals:
- International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2024
EL NECECER ROJO
(The Red Vanity Case)
Directed by: Serge Garcia
Written by:Azalea Aguilar
Cinematography: Edson Reyes
Length: 15:00 min
Format: 16mm
Year: 2024
Qualified for the 97th Academy Awards for the Best Documentary Short Film category
Synopsis:
A red vanity case holds an unadorned story of a mother’s life. The daughter, ever the observer, watches as it fills with secrets, losses, and finally, ashes. This is the inheritance of migration, revealing the quiet tension between independence and abandonment, told with clinical precision in this award winning film.
Director’s note:
El Neceser Rojo is the first film in an anthology of short hybrid documentary films marked by a collaboration across generations—my mother writes autobiography, I direct. At the center is Artemisa—unconventional, magnetic, estranged—my grandmother.
This is not a story of healing, but of survival as residue. Of single motherhood as aftermath, not resolution. It asks what agency looks like within domestic and patriarchal confines, and whether its ever truly existed at all.
Festivals:
- International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2024
EL NECECER ROJO
(The Red Vanity Case)
Directed by: Serge Garcia
Written by:Azalea Aguilar
Cinematography: Edson Reyes
Length: 15:00 min
Format: 16mm
Year: 2024
Qualified for the 97th Academy Awards for the Best Documentary Short Film category
Synopsis:
A red vanity case holds an unadorned story of a mother’s life. The daughter, ever the observer, watches as it fills with secrets, losses, and finally, ashes. This is the inheritance of migration, revealing the quiet tension between independence and abandonment, told with clinical precision in this award winning film.
Director’s note:
El Neceser Rojo is the first film in an anthology of short hybrid documentary films marked by a collaboration across generations—my mother writes autobiography, I direct. At the center is Artemisa—unconventional, magnetic, estranged—my grandmother.
This is not a story of healing, but of survival as residue. Of single motherhood as aftermath, not resolution. It asks what agency looks like within domestic and patriarchal confines, and whether its ever truly existed at all.
EL NECECER ROJO
(The Red Vanity Case)
Directed by: Serge Garcia
Written by:Azalea Aguilar
Cinematography: Edson Reyes
Length: 15:00 min
Format: 16mm
Year: 2024
Qualified for the 97th Academy Awards for the Best Documentary Short Film category
Synopsis:
A red vanity case holds an unadorned story of a mother’s life. The daughter, ever the observer, watches as it fills with secrets, losses, and finally, ashes. This is the inheritance of migration, revealing the quiet tension between independence and abandonment, told with clinical precision in this award winning film.
Director’s note:
El Neceser Rojo is the first film in an anthology of short hybrid documentary films marked by a collaboration across generations—my mother writes autobiography, I direct. At the center is Artemisa—unconventional, magnetic, estranged—my grandmother.
This is not a story of healing, but of survival as residue. Of single motherhood as aftermath, not resolution. It asks what agency looks like within domestic and patriarchal confines, and whether its ever truly existed at all.
Festivals:
- International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2024
- International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2024
- Guanajuato International Film Festival, 2024 (Winner of best Mexican short documentary film)
- Doclisboa, Lisbon, 2024
- Doxa Documentary Film Festival, Vancouver, 2024
- Doxa Documentary Film Festival, Vancouver, 2024
- Doxa Documentary Film Festival, Vancouver, 2024
- Transmutación Festival de Cine Contemporáneo CDMX, 2024
- Transmutación Festival de Cine Contemporáneo CDMX, 2024
- Transmutación Festival de Cine Contemporáneo CDMX, 2024
